This Life, And Then the Next
by Chasing Liquor
Summary: In the aftermath of tragedy, McKay and Keller found a love which transcends the cosmos. Set in the "Last Man" timeline.


**Disclaimer**: MGM, I thank you a final time for your sandbox.

**Spoilers: **The Last Man

**Description:** Set in the "Last Man" timeline. In the aftermath of tragedy, McKay and Keller found a love which transcends the cosmos.

**Warnings: **Nothing at all.

**A/N**: So, full disclosure: I've lost all interest in writing Atlantis pieces at the moment. I suppose it was bound to happen, considering how prolific I was and the fact that the series is now over. But I didn't think it would be right not to offer one last story for the road, considering how courteous and lovely people on here have been in following my work.

I hope you find this story a suitable conclusion to a very fun creative period for me. I've greatly enjoyed writing McKay and Keller (and am open to returning to them if I'm ever again struck with inspiration).

It should come as no surprise that this piece was inspired by a song called "This Life," from the new Bruce Springsteen album. I can say without reservation that it was one of the most beautiful efforts I've ever heard, and I highly recommend you seek it out.

Let me know how this story came together. Many thanks, and I hope you enjoy.

* * *

**This Life, And Then the Next**

* * *

**1. A bang, then stardust in your eyes**

**A billion years or just this night**

**Either way, it'll be all right**

* * *

McKay stared out the window into the wild swath of blue.

It was funny, he thought. Somewhere down there, an awful lot had changed. There were newly born babies and newly buried bones; emptied-out houses and just-erected ones; trees logged and trees planted. But it didn't _look_ any different than the place he remembered.

"What are you doing?"

He blinked once, then rubbed his face, smiling slightly.

"Just… you know… looking."

"It's kind of weird," she said, following his eyes out the window. "I've seen so many planets from space, this just feels like another one. Hard to believe I used to think the whole universe happened down there."

"That's all right. I used to believe the whole universe happened in here," he replied, gesturing to his head with a smirk.

"When did that change?"

She'd meant it as a joke, and she was sure her tone had made that clear. But McKay just glanced away awkwardly. It was a habit of his. Seconds passed, until she was certain he wasn't as afraid of the silence as she was, and the measures taken to end it were hers alone.

"What are you thinking?" she asked, jittering a bit.

McKay frowned, like the question was invasive. Maybe it was in its own way, even to a man who'd borne heart and soul to her the previous weeks. He skimmed a hand across his neck. His eyes narrowed slightly.

"I was thinking about the Big Bang."

"That's a bit heavy for one o'clock in the morning."

"That? Please. I disproved entropic cascade failure when I was bored on my way to Denver."

Keller's mouth twitched on one side.

"So you've disproved the Big Bang Theory then?"

"I, uh…" He paused, distracted. "Not exactly."

He suddenly appeared fragile to her, so she kept her voice soft, the way he had his when she'd sought his bed the night before. His eyes seemed to keep getting smaller.

"What then?"

"I was thinking," he began quietly, voice gravelly, "how if everything that's ever been or now is used to be part of a single point, then since the day it all exploded, we've spent thirteen billion years drifting away from each other. And the rate at which we do it is exponentially increasing."

He glanced over at her, thinking how her sour frown was a gift.

"I can almost feel it happening," he told her. "And I know that sounds crazy, and I think I _am_ crazy, but you asked, so that's what I was thinking, and I hope that, considering you wanted to know, you won't hold me accountable for any of my – "

His breath caught in his throat when she laid a hand on his face, fingers half-curled in an awkward touch more satisfying than sex. It was so abrupt that he couldn't muster a word. Couldn't move a muscle beyond the awkward twitch in his face. But he thought it miraculous that he wasn't uncomfortable.

"Rodney?"

He stared down at her blankly.

"Sometimes it's different, right?"

"Hmm?"

"Sometimes things collide, don't they?" she said. "Like carbon and hydrogen and oxygen. And they combine to make planets. Doesn't it mean something that with everything so random, life finds a way across galaxies?"

His face contorted beneath her touch as he considered the point, more seriously than he would a claim of Zelenka's. Her hand was soft, he thought. It was lovely how unflinchingly feminine she was, without having to doll herself up or bother with polish. What was it he was considering? Something about…

"Yeah, I suppose it does," he said finally.

And then she kissed him.

* * *

**2. A blackness, then the light of a million stars**

**As you slip into my car**

**the evening sky strikes sparks**

* * *

It was strange, this pretense of separate lives.

Most nights, he stayed at her place and they slept with their clothes on. They'd yet to be intimate in the way some think of it, but neither of them were frustrated. Sex, to many, was cathartic, a sort of return to the time when man was ape, and he or she wasn't put upon except by a need to eat and drink and sleep and lay claim to the other gender.

But things weren't like that now. And it was a comfort to know they didn't have to be.

McKay opened the door for her, like he always did. It used to be sweet, but ever since he slammed it against her foot the earlier Tuesday, it wasn't quite as charming. She smiled just the same.

He circled back around to the driver's side, then slipped into his seat. As he started the car and put it in drive, her curiosity at last got the best of her.

"Where are we going?"

"Well, if I told you, then – "

"You'd have to kill me?"

He frowned – snarled, really.

"No, it would ruin the surprise," he snapped. "Quit being morbid."

She blinked, a little taken aback by his sharpness. It didn't sound as if he was joking; he sounded angrier than he'd ever been at her. She glanced at him timidly.

"I… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to – "

"I love you."

It was a strange thing to say, and a strange time to say it. But to him, it kind of made sense, for what more are the words than an unfurled rope in need of hands on two sides to grasp it?

He stared ahead, hands weakly curved around the steering wheel, and to her eyes, he appeared less a man than he did a wasting star, whose numbered days, though an inevitability, wouldn't be spent in quiet. And she loved him for that.

"It isn't easy finding people who care about me," he said. "And if I lose you, I'll never find another one."

She saw in his eyes the heartbreaking certainty of it. Her hands, of their own accord or – if you believed in that sort of thing – that of the great unconscious, applied pressure to his face to angle it toward her. She left her palms there afterward.

"You won't lose me," she told him.

And that was the moment when he knew he loved a liar.

* * *

**3. This life, this life and then the next**

**With you I have been blessed**

**What more can you expect?**

* * *

"How did you know?"

Over his shoulder, she watched the ferris wheel turn and turn and turn, like it wouldn't ever stop. The green and red lights weren't as blinding as she remembered, but just as hypnotic. It was 1988 again.

McKay smiled shyly.

"When we were at your dad's, he talked about how your mom took you when you were young," he said, brushing some hair out of her face. "He, um… he said it was the last good memory you had from then."

Keller smiled, bittersweet, and she nodded. Standing on the pier was like glimpsing into the past, and to share it with one who sought to, but never could understand all that once was brought the doctor interlocking measures of happiness and sorrow.

She reached out and grasped his hand, lacing their fingers, and she began to tug him along. He, of course, went willingly.

He bought her some cotton candy at one point, then employed his underrated marksmanship to win her a plush dog. She beamed throughout.

They rode the big roller coaster, but McKay spent most of it with his arms crossed, unimpressed, and then he spent a few minutes after they got off explaining the manner in which he would improve upon it. She suggested he pen a letter with such insights, but he was already distracted by the pretzel vendor.

When they finally got around to the ferris wheel, it was midnight and everything was shutting down. He argued, virulently at points, with the attraction's teenaged operator. But it didn't get him anywhere. The lights went off, and the stragglers were ushered out.

Keller cried.

He thought maybe the past was just hurt on top of hurt, and remembering it's like Jenga. And he was awful tired of pulling the wrong tiles.

**

* * *

**

**4. At night, at my telescope alone**

**this emptiness I've roamed**

**searching for a home**

* * *

He'd been hard to reach all night, ever since they got back from Church.

Keller was accustomed to Easter mass, and he'd obliged her in attending, but as buoyed as she'd been by the experience, he seemed to suffer from it. They'd watched TV – some awful movie with Nicolas Cage in a bear suit – and then settled in on the couch next to the superfluous heat of the fireplace.

She watched him watch the stars.

"So, you're quiet tonight."

He glanced down at her, head pillowed on his chest. He looked surprised to see her somehow, as if her presence were tangential. That might have been insulting to another woman. She was mostly intrigued by it.

"Am I? Sorry."

She rubbed a circle over one of his pectorals.

"You don't have to go to Church anymore if you don't want to."

McKay frowned, shaking his head.

"No, it's – I'll go whenever you want. It's not that. At least… not the way you're thinking, I guess."

"What way am I thinking?"

He sighed, trailing his fingers up her back, then running them through the length of her hair. She felt herself tire at the gesture.

"I just mean… I'm not against all that. It just puts a lot of questions in my head."

"Well, we all have questions. We just accept that there's some things we can't know."

"I'm a scientist. I don't accept things."

Keller kissed his heart through his shirt.

"Maybe you could start," she said.

He snorted sardonically, in that condescending manner of his.

"It's not that I'm skeptical of the idea that there's a God. Logically, it seems probable to me, all things considered. But to know all I know and accept a religion – it doesn't make any sense."

"What do you mean?"

"Okay, here's one," he said, sitting up a little, thoughtlessly forcing her to do the same. "There are an infinite number of realities, representative of every possible outcome to every possible choice."

Keller shrugged.

"All right…"

"That means that there are an infinite number of realities in which I'm a good person, who always does the right thing, and an infinite number of realities in which I'm more evil than Hitler."

The thought made her shiver a little.

"How then," he asked, "does God judge someone? Does each individual Rodney McKay have a soul, to answer for how they lived? Or are we all consolidated into one soul? If that's the case, how is there a Hell, when the infinite nature of the multiverse assures that my good deeds and my evil ones all even out?"

Keller opened her mouth, then closed it, flustered. She couldn't say such things had ever occurred to her. Of course, she'd almost be disappointed if they hadn't occurred to _him_.

"Well… those are… all good questions certainly."

"I know," he replied smugly.

She couldn't help smiling.

"Of course, maybe there's logical explanations for all of that, and you're just not smart enough to figure them out."

He crinkled his forehead incredulously.

"_Highly_ unlikely."

Still smiling, she pressed a kiss to his lips, then returned her head to his chest, coaxing him down onto his back. He submitted to the change, stroking her hair again for several minutes, before finally shutting his eyes.

"So, I've got my own question, actually," she murmured tiredly.

He sounded tired too.

"What's that?"

"Are there – " She yawned. " – an infinite number of universes in which you're really humble?"

He grumbled and pulled her closer, resting his cheek against her head.

"I hope not," he whispered, almost asleep. "What a waste…"

She felt herself drifting, up and away and through dreams' mansions. The last thing she could remember was thinking he was right – right about something, whatever it was.

* * *

**5. The stars, a brief string of shining charms**

**rushing in red out of our arms**

**into the drifting dark**

* * *

"I've never seen anything like this before. I wouldn't even know how to describe the x-rays," the old man said, scratching the ghost-like strands lingering on his bald head. "Her bones show a level of decay consistent with an advanced stage of osteoporosis."

McKay shook his head, frustrated.

"Yes. I – it's strange. I realize that. But it's _hardly_ – "

"Her lungs," the man continued, "have fluid in them, and it's likely to worsen. Her liver and kidneys are going to fail. I'm afraid you're going to have to prepare yourself for – "

He nearly fell when McKay shoved him.

"_Stop it_! Just… just shut up," the younger of them growled, eyes flashing red, though his anger atrophied in the next moment. "You – you obviously have no idea what you're doing. Anyone even approaching competence could tell you that she's fine. Just look at her."

The old man regarded him passively, then glanced across the room to the bed where Keller slept. She looked peaceful, and beautiful, and it wasn't lost to him the reasons she was loved. That didn't mean a lot, though.

"She's dying, Mr. McKay."

It was true, of course. All his righteous indignation, and there was plenty of it as he made a call to Hank Landry, couldn't change the basic facts. But it sure felt good when he led her out there, hand in hand with a woman who was walking.

* * *

**6. We reach for starlight all night long**

**But gravity's too strong**

**Chained to this earth, we go on and on and on and on…**

* * *

She looked a little pale, certainly, and there were parentheses around her mouth where there'd been none once, but to extrapolate the promise of death from such things was to assume the death of the sun merely on account of its setting, and no parade of doctors or x-rays or MRIs could obscure a truth observed with his eyes: she was sick, but not too sick; she needed care, but not hospice care; she would die, but not from this.

He stroked the unblemished skin of her hand, mind a jumbled puzzle of incongruous notions.

How quaint men's ideas were of past and present and future. The first and the last were illusions, he thought, for were one to travel to either, they would cease to be what they _are_, and in so much as humans live linearly and apply personal circumstance as a barometer for all, the only moment of consequence is the one inhabited by the imbibing party. So, in a sense, he thought, he and Sheppard were both creatures of the present.

"Are you having deep thoughts again?"

He glanced up to find Keller awake, a tired smile tugging at her lips. One of his own followed.

"And what if I was?"

"Then I'd tell you," she said, deftly adjusting so that it was she who held his hand, "that life is too short to spend all your time trying to understand it."

He shook his head, summoning more fervor than the moment warranted.

"It's not short," he groused. "It's long. Really, really long. And it's going to seem even longer if you spend the next fifty years trying to tell me what I can and can't think about."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Someone's being grumpy."

"The lights are on."

Keller frowned.

"What?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we were making patronizing observations."

She laughed. She had to. And his contrite smirk was worth the energy it sapped her of. If it was possible to miss something wherever she was going, then she was sure she'd miss that.

"You know, there's a lot you have to learn about being the doting boyfriend," she said.

"Is that right?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Well, it just so happens, you have a lot to learn about being the sickly girlfriend."

"I'm pretty sure I'm just supposed to lay here," she said. "You, on the other hand…"

"Is this going somewhere, or are you just trying to make me feel bad?"

Keller turned his hand over and began rubbing circles in the palm, the way she knew he liked. That only seemed to sour him further, though, and she presumed he presumed she was about to ask a favor he'd not be inclined to honor. If he did, he was right.

"Is it nice outside?" she asked.

"What?"

"Up there. Outside. Is it nice?"

McKay blinked.

"It's a bit brisk, as I recall. But, um, not too bad, I guess." He paused, a familiar crease of confusion in his forehead before, struck with a delayed epiphany, he pursed his lips and grunted, "No. Absolutely not. Not going to happen."

Even weak, her tone a shade lighter, she still looked radiant. It wasn't particularly surprising that, as her gaze lingered upon him, his steadfastness ebbed and ebbed, until the charade was finally over and, after a period spent arguing with a bevy of doctors and nurses, they departed the dullness, sterility, and warmth of the infirmary for the darkness, starkness, and cool of the Colorado evening.

He had her wrapped in enough blankets to blunt the Arctic, and then he had one draped over both of them and one on the ground beneath them. It was overkill – earnest and unironic overkill – but she didn't much mind it, because it seemed to make him feel better.

"I can't remember the last time it was this starry out," she said, pressing back against his chest.

He accepted her weight, following her eyes to the dark, fleeting canvass above them, dotted white in spots too numerous for his eyes to fully catalogue. His mind, programmed for the exercise over some years, began of its own volition to identify some.

Vega. Rigel. Pollux. Atria. Kochab. HD 219828 b.

He closed his eyes upon spotting the last one. It was Lantia – the _first_ Lantia – and picking it out made him think once more about time's true nature. Somewhere out there, Rodney McKay was stepping through that stargate for the first time into the halls of a slumbering city. Alongside him walked Major John Sheppard. And there was no trust between them.

"My mom used to sit out with me like this," Keller said, sounding as distracted as he was.

"Did she?"

"We'd spend a while trying to find the perfect star – the brightest or the prettiest. And then when we found it, she'd tell me to think hard and make a wish. But she said not to say it out loud, because dreams and wishes aren't the same thing."

"How's that?"

Keller smiled, a little sadly, and her sigh betrayed a great fatigue.

"She said a dream is something that happens when you work hard and get lucky. But a wish comes true another way."

"And why shouldn't you say it out loud?"

There was a silence, and it stretched out for longer than was natural.

He ran his hands over her arms in what he hoped was a soothing gesture. But she didn't respond, affirmatively or in the negative. He waited another few moments, before intending to speak again, but as he opened his mouth to let spill a string of whispered utterances, it occurred then to him how shallow her breathing was.

McKay kissed the top of her head, sighing, and he tried in vain to draw her body, nearly molded to his already, even closer. And for all the blankets and all his body heat, he couldn't help but think how bone-stirringly cold she felt against him.

Why weren't wishes meant to be spoken? Did it make you a liar when they didn't come true? Did it make you something worse?

He pressed his cheek against her hair, rocking the two of them in a rhythmic motion, and he put away all thoughts of dreams and wishes, all ruminations of stars and dust – left those things to smarter men and those who'd still whole hearts.

He kept rocking, even when it was over.

* * *

**7. Then a million sighs, cresting where you stood**

**a beauty in the neighborhood**

**This lonely planet never looked so good**

* * *

It wasn't as busy as the last time.

And whereas there'd been a healthy mix of families and teenagers and couples in that previous instance, it was mostly single parents with a son or a daughter this time. Probably a spur of the moment trip for most of them.

He thought it was sort of sad that the same empty-eyed twenty-something with half a beard was still working the rifle game. For some reason, he felt compelled to play again. He hit every target, which entitled him to a stuffed animal. But he just shook his head, and rubbed his eyes, and said he didn't want it.

After that, he mostly wandered, though he always seemed to end up around the ferris wheel. But he never quite approached it

He got hungry eventually and bought a pretzel, sitting down in a mostly empty food court. As he ate, he stared off into some perceived void, alone but for the thoughts that stood in his shadow.

He wondered what Atlantis might look like when Sheppard found it. Would there be vines winding through the control room, sea creatures dwelling in flooded corridors? Would there be an Atlantis at all, or would he emerge through the gate into the deep blue sea? Maybe there'd still be an expedition from Earth, and some distant descendent of his would be working to achieve ascension. Or maybe Michael would be there, lapping daily from some fountain of youth, remembering the time when he was made to suffer and made others suffer in kind.

He barely noticed when a young boy ambled over, maybe eight or nine, presumptuously sliding into the opposite seat. The boy studied him, a silly grin on his face.

It wasn't until he began drumming his hands on the table that McKay finally glanced at him, looking particularly severe, even by his standards.

"Yes?"

The boy wasn't fazed.

"Hey."

"Can I help you?" McKay asked curtly.

"I'm Zack."

"And where are your parents, Zack?"

"My dad's in the bathroom," the boy said, tilting his head, as if the question were strange. "Who are you?"

McKay sighed in exasperation.

"A stranger. Didn't they teach you about us in kindergarten?"

"I'm in third grade," the boy said, clearly affronted.

"Oh, so you can take care of yourself, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Of course. How ridiculous of me."

As children are prone to do, the boy set aside his indignation and pursued another line.

"Why are you here by yourself?"

McKay stuffed a piece of pretzel into his mouth, though he wasn't hungry anymore.

"Because I am."

"Where are your kids?"

"I don't have any."

"Why not?"

"Because they ask stupid questions."

The boy smiled blithely.

"What's your job?"

"I'm a scientist."

"I like science. I think maybe I wanna be a doctor."

McKay blinked, glancing down. His scowl dissolved into something more pitiful.

"Well…" He swallowed, face tight. "Good. That's good."

If the boy noticed his demeanor change, he surely didn't show it. He bounded on to his next subject with all the subtlety of a coke fiend, eyes big and intense.

"Where are you from?"

"Canada," his elder answered quietly.

"Canada? _Really_?"

The boy's excitement puzzled him. Were people so insulated that the north seemed exotic? Maybe so. He'd been gone a long time, after all. And he wasn't all the way back.

"Yes."

The boy leaned forward on his elbows, eager and demanding, and he regarded McKay imploringly.

"Tell me about Canada," he said in a rush. "What are people like? Why do they live there? Why do they live at all?"

McKay paused, gazing into his eyes to glimpse a purpose, but finding none. He shook his head and looked away. Beneath the table, his foot tapped the ground in manic rhythm. It was a habit he'd left behind in college. He wasn't glad to have it back.

"Zack, what are you doing?"

An older man – fifty maybe, or forty the hard way – stalked up to the table tiredly. He glanced at McKay apologetically.

"I'm sorry if he bothered you," he said, turning immediately to the boy and continuing, "Come on, let's go. I told you not to talk to anyone."

The young one complied, slinking out of his seat, but he insisted, "I was just – "

"I don't want to hear it. You know better. Don't you?"

The boy nodded, though he appeared to suffer in doing it. His eyes, so wide and curious in the preceding moments, were small and dull as he was led off. When he was a solid twenty feet away, he looked back over his shoulder and waved.

McKay waved back awkwardly.

It was some minutes before he stood himself, depositing his half-finished pretzel in the garbage. It seemed like he was wasting a lot of things these days.

As he set out across the boardwalk again, no destination of note as his compass, his mind wandered.

He thought about what he'd say to Sheppard if he ever saw him again. He wondered if Carson felt anything as he withered in his stasis chamber. He tried to imagine what Heaven or Hell would be like in the event that he were judged.

He thought about how lonely the ferris wheel looked, a flashing whirl of red and green, all its cages empty. The boardwalk was empty now too – no sign of anyone in any direction, not even the carneys or a janitor.

He glanced up at the sky, clouded over and starless.

Except for one.

He couldn't assert which it was, or if it was near or far or in-between. He wondered if it burned still, or if the million year-old light was an echo of the dead.

He stared up at it for a while, never saying a word. And then at midnight, when the ferris wheel grinded still and all the lights disappeared, he smiled slightly, hands in his pockets, and walked away.

* * *

**0. This life, this life and then the next**

**With you I have been blessed**

**What more can you expect?**

* * *

He couldn't remember being this tired.

Weeks of two-hour sleep and life-or-death adrenaline were beginning to catch up with him, and his decades as a coffee junkie had so altered his brain chemistry that caffeine was virtually impotent to act against the feeling.

He wearily lifted his fork to his lips, begrudgingly taking a bite of the lukewarm meatloaf. It was bad enough fresh, he thought. This bordered on a Geneva violation.

So busy was he, in fact, pondering the strongly-worded memo he planned to send Weir that, when a young lady, whose face and form were unknown to him, approached the table, a tray held in two hands, he was severely startled.

"Jesus!" he exclaimed, dropping his fork.

The woman looked contrite, flustered.

"Oh, gosh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to startle you. I – sorry." She sighed, setting her tray down. "I just, I saw you sitting by yourself and, considering there's no one else here – " She gestured around her to the empty commissary " – I figured we could…"

He'd recovered from his shock, but though he knew the decent thing to do would be to cut her off and accept her unnecessarily vehement apology, he found himself too preoccupied – enraptured, really – looking over her young face to do anything of the sort.

The woman cleared her throat uncomfortably, sitting down without invitation. When he still didn't say anything – it was sort of flattering, really, and at least he was looking at her face and not elsewhere – she pressed on.

"I'm glad to see somebody here so late," she said, smiling. "I was starting to think I was the only night owl in the whole city."

He finally shook himself from his reverie.

"Um… yeah. I mean, no, you're not. Obviously. I work late a lot. Have to. I'm pretty important."

It should have seemed hopelessly conceited, a remark like that, but the woman found herself smiling instead. She got the impression he said things like that for his own benefit and not for others'. She hoped so, at least.

"I'm Jennifer Keller," she said, reaching her hand across the table.

He smiled slightly, accepting it.

"Rodney McKay."

Both lingered with the contact longer than was polite. When they finally pulled their hands back, she glanced down shyly, eyeing the cellophane covering her dinner roll. Thankfully, it was him who spoke again.

"I wish they would get some decent food in here. I feel like I'm eating rubber."

"You shouldn't wish for something out loud," she said.

He frowned, looking quizzical, and he couldn't escape the sense that this was all somehow familiar, as much as that feeling and the moment's facts stood in contradiction. Perhaps he'd heard the words spoken by another, at some time he couldn't recall by some person not worth remembering, but that didn't account for the way he looked on her as if not for the first time.

But he didn't think of it for too long, didn't linger on what he couldn't know, because she smiled at him, and he smiled in kind, and in her eyes he saw something worth more than a billion tomorrows and yesterdays.

* * *

**FIN**

* * *

**A/N:** I hope you enjoyed it, and that the piece seemed cogent -- that all of the subtle interlocking pieces fit together to your satisfaction. I deliberated a lot about ending it after "7," because it felt like a natural conclusion. But as the entire story was originally conceived around concluding with "0," I couldn't justify ending it any differently. Not to mention it wouldn't be fair to depress the hell out of you with my last story.

Many thanks for reading.


End file.
